Event Experience : WiCamp Chennai - Sharing the takeaway from Event (held on 13 June 2008)

The Chennai WiCamp is over, sharing the takeaway from event.

Friday the 13th is considered inauspicious by most, and that’s possibly why we had this WiCamp to turn the tide at the Chennai. These were the 150 campers, the largest till date for any WiCamp that turned the day around. Will you believe that the WiCamp lasted till 8 PM (mind it, Wiproites in office till 8 PM on a Friday). Campers came in from over 36 diverse firms including: USA Web Solutions, ISBR, Great Lakes Institute of Management, Business Blogging, 360 Degree Interactive, Collab.Net, SweetCircles.com, Hexaware Technologies, Home Plan Guru, Accenture, The Hindu, CSC, NIIT Technologies, Cognizant, Satyam, Find Near You, NASSCOM, Agriya Infoway, IIT Chennai, Crescent Engineering College, Velammal Engineering College, UPSL, IBM ISL, Faculty of Management studies, Patni, Indus Media Technologies, Alpha Tech, Vembu Technologies, Congruent Solutions, iMorph Innovation Center, NTTF, Reach Information and Communication System, Rang De, Fuente Systems Inc and Wipro Technologies.

Here are the key takeaways from the WiCamp.

Do share your perspectives on the subject and the WiCamp at large.

Regards Pavan Son (I as in Innovation)

The “Ergo” that got it right
Ever wonder what it takes for someone to reinvent the print media industry. This is what Karthik created out of The Hindu. A daily targeting the IT community of Chennai and the one that sold 55,000 copies from day one. Key takeaways from the Egro journey: accepting an interesting challenges to create Ergo out of a decade old Hindu Group; have an insight that addresses a context, target audience and a business proposition. In case of Ergo, this insight included: delivering paper to commuters en route to their offices, delivered at bus free of cost. Also Ergo hosts First Innings every Monday that features start-ups and attempts projecting these entrepreneurs as heroes.

Suggestions for a Social Innovation
Ram and Smita visited the WICamp second time in sharing their vision of sustainable micro credit for the Indian masses, while seeking some suggestions on how to motivate people to participate in such social innovations. Some of the suggestions that flowed in were: encouraging people to go for non-dollar investments, such as their thoughts, guidance, contacts, etc; building partnerships with religious institutions where there’s surplus money; and ensure accountability and transparency in operations. If you have any other suggestions write back to www.rangde.org.

Globalization, Standardization and Diversity- The Mixing Bowl
One of the most refreshing presentations came from Shyam who drew inspiration from idly, chai waala and other commonplace instances in driving his message of how innovations can take so many different hues and shades. He further took a plethora of examples in depicting that there could be more that one ways of innovating and innovations come from people. Those needn’t be the most educated, the rich or even the fortunate few, those needs to have a knack of doing things differently and sustainably. So the next time you see people performing their chores, try identifying innovations and pearls of creativity, you will surely get inspired.
Innovation in Product Creation, Marketing and Recursive Improvements
Dorai, the founder and CTO of iMorph shared his wisdom on how to nurture ideas through validation and quick prototypes. He started with establishing the significance of capturing ideas and mulling over those and sharing, as ideas spur ideas. Equally important is to validate those ideas using the valuable information on the subject, (say googling) and thence creating an Idea Pyramid, with the most promising ideas at the top. It is vital to group ideas and draw abstractions from those in identifying meta problems and again addressing those. While doing all this, always remember: trend is a friend. Surely a great insight.

[Read More..]

Courtesy:- barcamp.org